


Thousand And One Night

by BarbaraKaterina



Series: At The Rope's End [6]
Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Captain Marvel (Marvel Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Discussion of Homophobia, Drunkenness, F/F, discussion of gender norms, discussion of one-sided attraction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 12:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18691729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarbaraKaterina/pseuds/BarbaraKaterina
Summary: Valkyrie is peacefully drinking in the communal space of the Avengers compound when Carol and Jessica come in with a very interesting conversation. Not that Brunhilde cares so much about Carol's past, but she definitely very much cares about Jessica's present. It's a pity she'll have to reveal a bit of her own past to get anywhere.This is part of the End of a Rope verse, but works perfectly well as a standalone.





	Thousand And One Night

**Author's Note:**

> This happens at some point between chapters 25 and 26 of End of a Rope. If you haven't read it, what you need to know is basically just that Ragnarok didn't happen and instead Valkyrie is on Earth with the Avengers, who have grown a little since the Civil War.

Brunhilde was sitting at the bar in the communal space, in the process of drinking her brains out and too impatient to keep coming back for new bottles, when she heard Jessica's voice from the entrance hall. 

“Fucking straight people, I swear to God,” she was saying. 

“Hey,” Carol protested with a laugh. “Hashtag not all straights.” 

“Yeah, I know, your boyfriend is straight,” Jessica replied as the voices got closer and the women entered the living space. “Whatever. I'm sure he's a special snowflake, the one unproblematic straight.”

“I'm straight,” Carol pointed out. 

Hilde could _hear_ the eyeroll in Jessica’s voice: “Two words, hun: Maria Rambeau.”

“We were just friends! Are. Are just friends.” 

Jessica suddenly turned to Brunhilde, who'd been watching the exchange with interest for several reasons, and said with exasperation: “You said you were into women. Please explain to her that living with her lesbian friend and rising a daughter together is not straight. God knows I've tried.” 

“We weren't living together! I just… stayed there a lot,” Carol protested even as Brunhilde replied with a shrug and a swig from her bottle: “I don't know how your categories work.” 

“How do the Asgardian ones work, then?” Jessica asked curiously. 

Hilde gave another shrug. “Well basically everyone is supposed to sleep with the other sex only. If you're a guy, it's fine if you fuck some other guy if it's showing dominance kinda stuff or there are no women available. Otherwise it's a little weird, and you can never bottom unless you want to lose all status. “

“That's messed up,” Carol commented. 

Brunhilde took another large gulp. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And as a woman?” Jessica continued probing. 

Hilde gave her empty bottle a desolate look and went to find another. “You're supposed to love men and sew their clothes or whatever,” she said as she searched. “Do healing magic. Definitely never fight.”

“You fight,” Carol pointed out.

“No shit,” Brunhilde muttered, grateful for a bottle of something green that looked strong enough to be worth her while. 

At Jessica’s look, she straightened from her crouch behind the bar and elaborated: “Bor, Odin's father, formed an elite guard from all the women that wanted to fight. Honestly I think he just liked looking at us.”

“Just looking?” Carol asked in a tone that implied that if Hilde said it was more, Carol would personally fly up to Asgard, find Bor’s dead body in the black hole, and tear him a new asshole.

It was kind of adorable, in a very Carol way. 

“He couldn't have expected more,” Hilde explained, “because they all assumed we were into women. And a lot of us were, but often not just women, you know. But women who fight are just weird, so… “ She took another swig, but then she grinned. “They also assumed we wanted sex all the time, so when I slept with a man he usually tried really hard to not, you know, just roll off and fall asleep immediately.”

There was a short silence as the two human women contemplated this advantage.

“So… _Would_ two women living together and raising a child be seen as queer, then?” Jessica asked at length. 

“Absolutely not,” Hilde replied immediately.

“See?” Carol said triumphantly to Jessica,

“Women interested in women aren't expected to want children,” Brunhilde finished. 

“Oh.”

There was another silence, this time awkward, which Brunhilde filled by finishing that nice green bottle. 

“Did you?” Carol asked, and Brunhilde almost choked on her drink, which hadn't happened since she was a teenager. 

She didn't answer, and Jessica began to push Carol out of the room. 

She came back, however, and settled on a barstool beside Brunhilde, taking a bottle of her own and handing Hilde a new one. “Sorry about Carol,” she said. “She can be a bit… Too straightforward sometimes.”

Brunhilde shrugged. “So can I,” she said, and then, to change the topic: “So was she really dating that woman you talked about?” 

“Eh. Hard to say?” Jessica took a small, contemplative sip. “I mean, I'm a hundred percent sure Maria used to be in love with her, back before Carol became a superhero. I'm less sure about Carol's side of things.” 

“I thought you were _her_ friend?” Brunhilde asked with her eyebrows raised.

Jessica shrugged. “Yeah, but… Denial is a thing. At any rate, I do know what went down with Maria: they were friends, as Carol would say, for a long time before Carol had the accident, was stolen by the Kree and presumed dead on Earth. Maria mourned her, and then Carol came back for a while, did some hero work… And didn't come back for a really, really long time. Maria was… hurt by that, because this time it was by choice. She got over it and now is happily married, but the relationship is not what it used to be. “

Brunhilde frowned at this. Willingly leaving your girlfriend behind...that was incomprehensible to her. She forcefully tore her mind away from the way she had left her partner, and to distract herself, asked: “So why did Carol leave? Was she simply not interested?” 

Jessica sighed into her bottled. “Well, it was the early nineties, you know - or I suppose you don't. Being gay wasn't so heavily accepted back then, so most bi people just kept to the opposite sex and kept their head down. Best as I can tell, Carol didn't really accept what she felt about Maria, because she didn't accept herself. But I might be wrong and she might actually be completely straight, or ace or aro, or she's biromantic but heterosexual…there weren't even words for this stuff back then, you know, how was she supposed to know what was going on?“

There weren’t words for this on Asgard either, and All-Speak was only giving Hilde vague concepts, but it was enough to be going on and she didn’t want to look like an idiot if she asked. “And now?” She demanded instead.

This time Jessica’s sigh was even deeper, and she took a much larger gulp. “I think Carol prefers not to think about this, because of what happened with Maria exactly. Which pisses me off because I want things to be all right between them again, and they won't be unless she deals with this.” 

Hilde hummed. “And what about you?” She asked then, fishing for all she was worth. “I got you're not straight, so… do you maybe want her to figure it out because you want a chance?”

Jessica resolutely shook her head. “Mind you, I had a bit of a crush on her when I met her - she was this awesome hero after all - but I got over that long ago. Having a girlfriend who _wasn't_ disappearing into space at all times helped a lot.”

“Oh, you gonna introduce us?” Hilde asked with false excitement.

Jessica shook her head with a scoff. “We broke up a while ago.”

“Hmm. Anyone else or new on the horizon? Any beautiful women you _would_ be willing to introduce me to? Or men, I suppose? Do you sleep with men as well?” Hilde’s words were slurring a little by this point, but really, only a little.

Jessica rolled her eyes. “I do sleep with men...theoretically. But I’ve had a bad experience, so I tend to avoid them, really.”

Brunhilde was sure there was some kind of thing she was supposed to say to a piece of news like this, but unfortunately her brain refused to supply it, and what actually came out of her mouth was: “Good decision. So what about the ladies?”

She might or might not have leered a little as she said that. Jessica gave her a suspicious look. “There’s no one at the moment,” she admitted after a while. “ I'm chaste as a nun right now.” 

“Are you?” This time Brunhilde _definitely_ leered at her. “How devoted to that life are you exactly?”

Jessica laughed. “Don't make offers you won't follow through on,” she warned. 

“Oh, I always follow through,” Hilde assured her. 

The other woman gave her an intent look. “You are actually serious?” She asked then.

“Of course I am serious, darling,” Hilde muttered and moved to put a hand around Jessica’s waist.

Jessica let her, but she gave her a searching look. “And after?” She asked. “We do live in the same house part time and work together, so it’s not exactly ideal for a one night stand.” 

That was more complication than Hilde wanted to deal with at the moment. “Maybe I'm interested in more than one night,” her mouth threw out without her approval. But what the hell, why not. Two or three nights would be fine as well.

“Are you?” Jessica asked pointedly, and shit, that look was way too serious for Hilde’s comfort.

“I dunno, I'm drunk and horny!” She defended. Surely everyone could see it was not fair to ask her questions like that at this particular point in time. Or, preferably, ever.

“Exactly,” Jessica said pointedly. “So if you still have the same idea in the morning, come see me then,” she added and removed Hilde’s hand from her waist, getting up from the bar stool. 

“Who says I won't be drunk and horny in the morning?” Brunhilde called after her as she was leaving the room.

Jessica only gave her a tired and exasperated look before she disappeared.

Well damn. This called for another bottle.

**Author's Note:**

> This will continue! At some point...
> 
> I’m sorry for making Carol’s and Maria’s backstory sad. It was the only way it fit into my story, and I actually have two friends whose tale goes pretty much like this, so...yeah.
> 
> Also (tw: historical heteronormativity), the whole Asgardian approach to women warriors was brought to you by the Old Norse concept of “ergi”. It’s used quite commonly for Loki in fanfics, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it for a woman. For a man, it had the connotations of “effeminate perversion/freakishness”, but for women it is basically switched. She was too much like a man, so it’d be “nymphomaniac freakiness.” They didn’t really apply it to the Valkyries as far as I know because, you know, mythical creatures, but real life women would definitely have to deal with that.
> 
> Thus also me having Brunhilde flirt a bit “like a man”. She’d have been socialized that way the moment she became a fighter, to be relatively forward and sometimes even borderline aggressive.


End file.
